You know your addicted to the iPad games when:1. Your finger develops a callus from tapping and sliding across the screen.2. You wake up to go pee in the night and check to see how your game is going.3. When you've check the game and then spent two hours playing it and other when you should have been sleeping.4. When your dominate shoulder begins to hurt from repetitive motion.

I'm an addict. I've fallen in love with Fish with Attitude. There are a number of other games I'm addicted to and love and spend waaaaay too much time playing. But Fish with Attitude has caused my iPad shoulder.

In the game you breed fish and place them in tanks. (It's free by the way) They are cute and have personalities. My favorite is the wizard. He turns other fish into frogs for a few seconds. In order to switch tanks there's this lovely feature on the iPad in which you slide your finger across the screen. I have 15 tanks and 3 breeding tanks, plus 25 storage tanks. That's a lot of sliding.

I lost my favorite stylus and so am moving my arm to slide. Over and over and over and over and over. You'd think at my age I'd know better. It goes to show how stupid we can be in our old age. So now my shoulder aches. How'd have thought moving your hand across a screen would do that?

Well, I'm going to go get something to rub on it to help the ache... Then I have to check my fish.

So, Giving Love, the third book in the Cottonwood series, is finished and in the editing stage. I've been writing furiously so I could have it done and to the editor by Nov. 3. We should have it finished and ready for formatting by the middle of the month which means by the end of November it will be available in print and e-formats.

I've always said this is what God wants me to be doing at this stage of my life. He has supplied all the ideas, characters and plot points along the way. I've just been the one who has typed them out. All the praise and glory goes directly to him.

My goal was to have three books in the series released this year. I've been able to achieve this. Again, I thank God for helping me accomplish my goal.

My original thought was that Cottonwood would be a three book series. I had three ideas for stories so thought that was all there would be. I've underestimated God, of course. There will be at least one more. I won't predict there will be any more but I won't eliminate the possibility. That's up to the Lord. I do have one more idea for the characters in Cottonwood but... Who knows.

NANOWRIMO usually referred to as NANO is the acronym for NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth. It happens every November from 12:00:01 AM November 1 to 11:59:59 PM November 30.

Beginning in 1999 with 21 participants it's grown over the years to 256,618 participants and 36,843 winners in 2011.

Okay, so you still haven't got a clue what it is.

NANO is starting to write a novel on Nov. 1 and writing 50,000 words by Nov. 30. That's a lot of words. 1,667 words per day. If you've never tried to do that... Believe me that's a lotta word. Last year I was an even newer author than I am now. I hadn't published anything, was still on the first draft of Healing Love and found out about NANO three weeks before and I was gone for the next week. I really hadn't a clue about planning out a novel so you could write over 1500 words a day and have it make sense.

Lord's Love was my NANO novel last November. I learned a lot. Keep a list of characters and their characteristics. I figured this out about ten days into the month. Jot down (in my case this means type on the "index cards" in my writing program) the Major Events which end up as chapters in the book. Whatever details you can think of need to be recorded so you DON'T FORGET them. Again, I learned this the hard way. I won't bore you with any other things I learned.

I mentioned winners earlier. Here's what you win.Such a nice web badge isn't it? That's what you get from the organization. Hey, they operate on a shoe-string budget so it's fine. Createspace gave each winner 5 free print books which was appreciated. Several other companies offer prizes too. In all it doesn't had up to $100 but that's not the purpose of NANO.

50,000 words of a novel written in one month. That's the goal.

This year I'm going to attempt a Steampunk genre novel. If you've read any Jules Verne you'll have an idea of what Steampunk is. It's an alternate timeline in which the internal combustion engineer doesn't work and steam (hence the name) and clockwork machines are the order of the day.

We'll see how this year's NANO goes. 1,667 words a day... That's the goal.

I hope you’ve enjoyed both Healing Love and Lord’s Love by now. I’m getting asked by people around here when the next book is coming out. I’m working hard on it now and hope to be able to release it in early Dec. That means it is needs to go to the editor by Nov. 3.

As a new and self published author who lives near enough to the edge of the world that you can hear the water falling, it’s difficult to get people to read your books. I haven’t done marketing since I’m focused on writing. Large chain bookstores will offer the books online but not in brick and mortar stores. Even the Christian chain stores only take books from traditional publishers.

The dilemma faced by myself and other new and/or self published authors is exposure. The best way to get exposure is by those who read the books to write a review.

I purchase a lot of things online. It comes from: 1. Being an hour away from a mall. (Refer to the above reference to the edge of the world.) 2. Not liking to go shopping. 3. Spending my time writing or doing something else I like or need to do rather than an hour each way and hunting through stores still not finding what I want. 4. Being lazy and liking to shop in my nightgown in my sunroom.

When I find something I’m interested in I read the reviews. I’m pretty sure you do also. I don’t want to have to ship something back because I didn’t have an idea about what it was like and what others thought about it.

So I come to the point of this whole post. If you enjoy my books, I humbly ask that you take a few moments to go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, etc. and leave a review. It will be

It doesn’t have to be long and involved. Simply saying you enjoyed the book and hope the author writes more. This will be very much appreciated by any self published or new author.

I'm really beginning to dislike social media. I have never been convinced that people care what I'm doing at any given time of the day, what I'm eating or about my opinion in general. I wrote two blog posts a while ago: So You Want a Web Presence and Web Presence 2.

Today I decided to list some of the reasons why I'm starting to hate the whole social media thing.

1. It's a time sink.... I'm not one who has Facebook or Twitter on all day. I have other things to do. Frankly, I'm not much interested in what you are doing. Sorry, but I have things I'm trying to get done. People I see in town who want the next book in the Cottonwood series ask me when the next one is coming out. If I spend a lot of time reading what others have posted or tweeted I'm not getting my work done. I have enough problems with that anyway. You should see my counters and laundry room.

2. Junk...Not much of true value is posted. I'm all for reading interesting and vital information. Unfortunately, the web has become a place for people to post things which are not true or are twisted out of all recognition. Then others post insulting and rude comments and these then go back and forth. What waste of time and thought.

3. Apps... I didn't realize that every time I tried a game on my iPad or answered a quiz on facebook it showed up somehow on my facebook account. I've been getting requests for things in games I played once and chucked since I didn't want to play them a second time. Today I spent about ten minutes deleting game apps from my facebook account so I wouldn't get these requests anymore. I had to remove each one separately or all of them at once. There are a couple I am playing, thus the ten minutes.

4. Notifications...Emails from groups I'm in come as soon as someone posts. I've set up a mailbox just for these so they can be scanned and deleted in mass. Maybe there's a way to stop them or have a digest but I'd have to figure it out. I know how to do the mailbox thing so I took the short way rather than the long.

5. Mega-Tweeters... You know, those people who tweet about every five minutes. Either they have staff or they are using canned tweets they've purchased. Yes, they have those and some people suggest to use them at scheduled times to get your name out there to promote yourself so people will buy whatever you are selling. That's a version of spam to me. I don't do or need that.

6. Too many id's and passwords... I know may of the social media sites can now use id's and passwords from other sites, but still it's a pain to have so many. I have a program which stores mine but I have to go to it so very often because I have no clue whether I use my facebook or twitter or some other id. We're told to use different id's and passwords for safety on the web. How can having one id which will let you in any social site be safe. It's confusing.Don't get me wrong. I think social media is a great way to stay in touch with family and friends. My high school class reunion was this summer and it was fun getting information and seeing people post on the facebook page the organizers set up.

I tweet when I post a blog or have some other new to relate. I have a facebook page to announce the same things. I use the message system with a writer friend. We are both on most afternoons and spur each other on with messages as we write.

Maybe it there was a link between each site to the other I would like it better. I don't know. I can't keep up with what I have to do now. Following twits and posts and pinnings, it's too much for my old brain to manage.